Queensland's drink driving laws reach a lot further than the public road, and the assumption that you are safe once you are off it is one of the more expensive mistakes people make.

Four situations come up again and again. Driving on your own land or in a car park. Riding an e-scooter home. Getting on a bike. Taking a boat out. They are not all treated the same way, and only one of them is genuinely lighter than driving a car.

Drink driving on private property

The short version is that private property does not put you outside the drink driving laws.

The Transport Operations (Road Use Management) Act applies its drink driving provisions to driving on a road or elsewhere. That last word is doing a lot of work. A paddock, a driveway, a private car park, a mine site, a station track. None of those is a road, and none of those is outside the offence.

The same applies to being in charge of a vehicle rather than driving it. You do not have to be moving.

This is where the classic scenario goes wrong. Someone has had a few, decides not to drive home, and moves the car around the pub car park or sleeps it off in the driver's seat with the keys on them. Both of those are situations people assume are the responsible option, and both have produced charges.

If you are genuinely trying to do the right thing after a night out, get out of the vehicle and stay out of it. Our page on drink driving covers the offences themselves.

Boats

Boating has its own limits and its own regulator, and Maritime Safety Queensland publishes them.

For recreational boats, the skipper must have a blood alcohol limit of less than 0.05. For commercial vessels the rules are tighter. Maritime Safety Queensland sets the limit for the master of a class 1 commercial vessel at zero, and for masters of other classes of domestic commercial vessel at less than 0.05, while recommending zero across the board for safety.

Drug rules apply on the water too. Maritime Safety Queensland describes police being able to require a saliva sample to detect methylamphetamine, MDMA and THC, and states there is zero tolerance for driving or boating under the influence of drugs.

The connection back to your road licence is the part people do not see coming. Maritime Safety Queensland indicates that recreational boaters convicted of drink or drug offences under section 79 of the Transport Operations (Road Use Management) Act may have their marine licence cancelled or suspended. So the two worlds are not sealed off from each other.

In Cairns, where a lot of people are on the water most weekends, this matters more than it might elsewhere.

E-scooters, e-bikes and bicycles

Here is the one that is genuinely different, and it is different in both directions.

The Queensland Government states that it is illegal to ride a personal mobility device or a bicycle, including an e-bike, with a blood or breath alcohol concentration of 0.05 or above. So there is a limit and it is the same number most people know from driving.

Police can enforce it in more places than you might expect. The Queensland Government describes police being able to test you on roads, footpaths, shared paths and in public places. A footpath is not a refuge.

What happens next is where it diverges. The Queensland Government describes two levels. If you ride with an illegal reading up to 0.149, you may be issued a penalty infringement notice. If your reading is 0.150 or over, you will need to attend court. Either way, if you are caught over the limit you cannot ride for the following eight hours.

And this is the important part. The Queensland Government states there are no licence sanctions for drink riding on a personal mobility device or a bicycle.

So riding an e-scooter home after drinking is against the law, and it can put you in court if your reading is high enough, but the consequence sits differently from a drink driving charge in a car. That is a real distinction and it is worth understanding accurately rather than as a rumour that scooters are fine.

The pattern worth taking away

The law is not organised around whether you are on a public road. It is organised around what you are in control of and where you are.

A motor vehicle brings the drink driving laws with it wherever it goes. A boat has its own limits and can still touch your marine licence through a road offence. A scooter or a bike has a limit and a penalty but not the licence consequences.

If you are trying to work out whether something is safe to do after drinking, the honest answer is that the exceptions are narrower than people hope and the enforcement is broader.

What to do if you have been charged in one of these situations

Find out exactly what you have been charged with and under which law. Private property matters, boating matters and road matters can look similar on a piece of paper and run differently.

Do not assume the location gives you an answer. People arrive convinced that being on private land or on a footpath is a complete answer to the charge, and that assumption is usually the reason they did not get advice earlier.



Write down the detail while it is fresh. Where you actually were, who was present, whether the vehicle was moving, where the keys were.

This article is current as at August 2026. Queensland drink and drug driving penalties are changing on 1 December 2026, and marine and personal mobility device rules change too, so check the current Queensland Government material rather than relying on this.

If you have been charged in Cairns in one of these situations

These matters often come with a genuine sense of unfairness, because the person was frequently trying to avoid driving in the first place. That sense is understandable and it is not an answer to the charge, but the surrounding circumstances can still matter a great deal to how a matter is dealt with, and they need to be put properly.

We act in drink and drug driving matters in Cairns and across Far North Queensland. If you have been charged somewhere you did not think the law reached, we can look at where you actually stand.

If you have been charged with drink driving in Cairns somewhere you did not think the law reached, speak with us about where you actually stand.